Today is a significant milestone for Amarillo College, which has not merely stood the test of time, but has long since exceeded the expectations of even its most visionary founders.
This is the 90th Anniversary of Amarillo College, which opened its doors for the first time on Sept. 16, 1929, at its original location on Lincoln Street in downtown Amarillo.
Whereas 86 students answered the inaugural roll call in a solitary building back in 1929, nearly 10,000 students are enrolled in academic classes today – at six campuses in three counties of the Texas Panhandle.
Celebratory anniversary events, large and small, are in various stages of planning and will pop up throughout the 2019-20 academic year to help commemorate the yearlong observance.
“Amarillo College has evolved and flourished in so many phenomenal ways over its first 90 years,” said AC President Russell Lowery-Hart. “It’s a very great honor to serve on behalf of a community asset as truly vital as AC.
“As we strive with great optimism to position the College for future prosperity, and as our national reputation continues to thrive, we want to make sure to reflect on our storied past, and on the innumerable individuals to whom the College owes its roots, its trajectory and its profound gratitude.”
AC’s first student body was welcomed in 1929 by seven original faculty members, including B.E. Masters, the College’s first president.
Putting the era in historical perspective: It was in 1929 when the first Academy Awards were presented, the soft drink 7-up was introduced, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art came into being.
Additionally, Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as the 31st U.S. president in 1929, billions of dollars were lost when the stock market crashed, and Chicago’s infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre made widespread headlines.
Anne Frank, Arnold Palmer, Martin Luther King Jr., and Audrey Hepburn were born in 1929 – and so was Amarillo College.
-Amarillo College